In _The
Winter's Tale_, and in _Cymbeline_, the happiness and existence of two
princely households, lost through long years, and imperiled to the death
by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the
queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In _Measure for Measure_, the
foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the brother, are
opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In
_Coriolanus_, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved
her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her
prayer, at last, granted, saves him--not, indeed, from death, but from the
curse of living as the destroyer of his country.
--Ruskin: _Sesame and Lilies_.
4.
_Bas. _So may the outward shows be least themselves;
_The world is still deceived with ornament_.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being season'd with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts:
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk;
And these assume but valor's excrement
To render them redoubted! Look on beauty,
And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it:
So are those crisped snaky golden locks
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head,
The skull that bred them in the sepulcher.
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